The Reaper and the Angel
Reapers were annoying. Or at least, that was what Lucy thought, anyway, but she was probably a little biased since she was supposed to detest them, being that she was a guardian angel and all.
But in all the years – centuries, really, although she wasn't sure because she'd stopped counting at some point after two-hundred – she'd been a guardian angel, watching over her humans and letting them live another day, she had never once met a reaper as annoying as Bickslow. He was quite literally the worst one she had ever had the misfortune of being assigned to the same human with.
He was rude, obnoxious, arrogant, almost cruel with how he treated his human, had the most annoying laugh in the entire goddamn universe, and he was, of course, a reaper. That alone was grounds for Lucy to want to strangle him every single time she saw him – which as it turns out, was every single day.
But she couldn't. Unfortunately.
At that point, Lucy had been stuck putting up with Bickslow for ten years. She had been counting those years, just because she wanted to be able to go back to the Grand Guardian and make him give her some kind of award for putting up with him for more than ten minutes. Because really, what had she done in her past life as a human herself that was so terrible to deserve her getting paired with him?
She was good at her job, too. She never gave up or let a reaper take a soul early when she got sick of them. She always watched over her human until there was nothing she could possibly do to let them live another day.
But Bickslow…
Bickslow was, compared to her, a baby. He was so young, he still remembered how he died in the first place – a plane crash, as it turns out – and the human they were assigned to, was just his first human! He was just a lil' baby reaper, as Lucy liked to call him, ten years down the track. Lucy still remembered when she'd first had the pleasure of meeting Bickslow. He'd quite literally fallen through the ceiling onto the floor of the delivery room, right as their human had been born. Lucy honestly hadn't been able to tell who had been the cutest that day – their human, just born, or Bickslow, all confused and wondering just how the hell he'd gotten there, because he hadn't exactly been given the reaper introduction he should've received.
But ten years, too many thoughts about wanting to strangle him, and twelve almost deaths later, Lucy was most definitely not thinking Bickslow was cute.
He was a nightmare. And she wanted to strangle him. Constantly.
"You know, I think it's going to be today."
Especially when he said that.
Lucy only rolled her eyes and turned to the reaper sitting beside her on the edge of the bridge, swinging his legs out and leaning back on his hands as he watched their human at the park below them. "No, it isn't," she insisted.
"You sure? I mean, the kid does have some pretty horrid luck…" Bickslow pointed out. Sure, that horrid luck was his doing, because as a first-time reaper, he had most definitely spent far too much time seeing if he could actually bring his human's soul just a little closer to being collected – abused his apparent powers and all – when his human had been younger.
That was only until Bickslow realised how annoying his guardian angel partner could be, though, so he'd decided to lay off on the terrorising front and just let nature run its course, because even without him interfering, he had next to zero luck. Though Bickslow didn't stop himself from making his human believe he really did have less than zero luck from time to time, mostly by doing things like making his power go out as soon as he was about to watch something, or make his hot water suddenly stop working when he was in the shower and getting ready for school. Harmless fun, really.
Lucy always thought otherwise, but whatever.
"Bickslow, he's nearly eleven. He's not that much of a child anymore. You, on the other hand…"
He rolled his eyes that time, and leaned away so the stupid guardian angel couldn't squeeze his cheek. Honestly, it hurt when she did that. "Yeah, yeah. I'm your lil' baby reaper. I got it the first four-thousand times," Bickslow muttered. "But he's still a kid. Everyone is a kid to me, considering I'm immortal and all now."
"You've been saying that for ten years."
"Yeah, well, sorry we're all not a million fuckin' years old."
Lucy couldn't help but shove him slightly as he sat up, just so he was suddenly letting out an always undignified squawk and falling towards the park beneath them. Of course, he never actually made it to the ground – he just poofed himself right back up to the bridge beside her. "I'm not a million years old, thank you very much," Lucy replied bitterly, still mostly watching her human in the park beneath them – he was on a sort of date, apparently. Lucy thought it was cute.
"Next time I'm bringing you down with me," the reaper muttered as he dusted off his sleeve. Then added, "And no? I could've sworn you were."
"No. Just… a few centuries. I think."
"I can't believe you stopped counting."
"You will once you've been doing it long enough."
He waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever," Bickslow sighed. "But seriously, it's gonna be today. I can feel it in my soul."
"Reapers don't have souls," Lucy mumbled.
"Oh yeah. Just here to collect them. Right." He still forgot sometimes. Whoops. "I can feel it where my soul would be. Kid's gonna die today."
"…Okay so maybe he isn't going to die today, but I'm pretty sure she is," the reaper mumbled as he grimaced at the scene before him: his first human enjoying his first time with the girlfriend of six-something months. Maybe the worst part was that Bickslow couldn't look away (though really, it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before… He'd quite literally watched the damn kid grow up).
But that was what Lucy was for, apparently, since she decided to appear next to him from wherever she'd been hiding, and then they were both in the kid's living room and Lucy was sort of sprawled over him on one lounge, because if it was one thing the guardian angel was not good at, it was teleporting them both. Bickslow couldn't even do it at all, though. He was still figuring out what he was capable of doing, eighteen years down the track. Still, he was used to finding himself someplace else with his arch nemesis on top of him. She'd slapped him a few dozen times for his comments over the years, too, but whatever.
"Don't watch them!" she hissed once she had scrambled off him and was instead sitting next to him on the sofa.
"I didn't mean to watch them," the reaper tried defending himself, only folding his arms and sitting back.
"Well, you were standing there," Lucy pointed out.
"It wasn't like I wanted to be standing there."
"You could have left the room and let them get on with it privately! Or, better yet, you could have just sat out here like a normal reaper and not been a giant perv." But when Bickslow only shrugged and lifted his hand to stare at his nails, Lucy's brow furrowed and she stared at the reaper beside her for a moment before finally asking, "Where were you today, anyway?" Usually Bickslow was always there, watching their human with her and playing stupid card games to keep themselves occupied, just because there wasn't really anything else to do other than that. But that day, he'd been unusually absent, and Lucy had been just a little bored without her annoying reaper to keep her company.
Bickslow shrugged again. "Was busy," he mumbled.
"So busy you couldn't even make it to his date tonight to see him choke on the entrée?"
"Kid wasn't gonna die today anyway. Didn't need to be there." If it was one thing Bickslow was certain of, it was that no matter what happened, his human was not going to be giving up his soul as long as the date remained what it was. So he'd really had no reason to be there, not when he'd had his baby sister's college graduation to go to.
He could barely remember anything about his life at that point – couldn't remember where he'd lived, what he'd done, if he'd done anything worthwhile in his twenty-something years on that planet. He remembered his family, though. Just. He remembered them because he'd had the pleasure of going to his own funeral. Lucy had made sure of that.
But Bickslow couldn't tell his guardian angel companion about how he'd kept an eye on his parents and his little sister for all those years, too, and he most definitely couldn't tell her where he'd been that day. Because reapers weren't supposed to miss people or get attached to humans. Lucy had made a point of making sure he knew that. Lucy also made a point of making sure he knew all about being a reaper, too, because he was just her lil' baby reaper and she knew so much more about them than he himself did.
So he just remained silent for a change and tried not to pay too much attention to the quiet sigh Lucy let out before a book was appearing in her hands and she began to quietly read.
It was only when Bickslow got bored of staring at his nails that he realised something, and he couldn't help but share it out loud – because really, why not? "You know what? I really miss sex." The fact his human's door was open and he could hear them didn't help that he was thinking of it.
Lucy was suddenly choking on air. "Really?" Of all the things the reaper could say, it just had to be that, didn't it?
"What? I do." He almost would've forgotten it had been eighteen years since he'd technically been laid if it weren't for the fact his human's eighteenth birthday just happened to be that day. He could see why Lucy had stopped counting. "Can reapers even get laid though?" He sure hoped so.
"How the hell am I supposed to know?"
"'Cause you're a know-it-all," Bickslow claimed. Lucy only shrugged and looked back down to her book. "So you're saying you've never actually tried to get laid as a guardian angel?"
"It's none of your business, but no," Lucy grumbled. Oh, if only she had somewhere else to be right then.
Bickslow was almost a little shocked. No sex in centuries? That had to be lonely as all hell. "Well, I'm all for being your—Okay, Jesus, don't throw a book at me! I was only kidding!" Well, he hadn't been kidding. Not originally. But Bickslow figured it was safer to just say that to avoid having another book thrown at him. It was a good thing he couldn't feel that much pain anymore, but still.
But even if Lucy obviously wasn't interested in finding out whether or not reapers or angels could even have physical relationships (or which each other, too. Bickslow was sure there was probably some kind of rule against it anyway), Bickslow still wanted to know. So he only sighed and stood up from the lounge and looked to his nails on one hand again. "Well, in that case," he began, only quickly glancing down to the angel with an eyebrow raised at him. "I have a long overdue date with my left hand. So if you'll excuse me."
"Doesn't it bother you that us reapers always win in the end?"
Lucy only looked up to the reaper sitting opposite her at the small table outside the small café, and she smiled. "Not at all," she answered happily.
"Why not?" Bickslow asked.
Thirty years, he'd been getting to know the competitive side of Lucy. Thirty years, he'd been arguing with her about when their human's time would come to an end, with him always claiming it would be that day – sometimes their human got close, though – and with her always rolling her eyes and telling him otherwise.
Thirty years.
It had really just been thirty years of Bickslow doing everything he could to get their human to give up his soul, as horrible as it was, just because it would mean Lucy wouldn't have to put up with him anymore, and thirty years of Lucy saving his life.
He'd always wondered why she even bothered. She really hadn't liked him for a long time. It was the way she was built, he supposed, since they were natural enemies in a way. But she'd always just said she could never let her dislike of reapers interfere with the natural order of things, or something like that (Bickslow had stopped listening at one point). When she wasn't able to save her human, she wouldn't. It was only when she knew she could do nothing that she would give in and give up, in a way.
But that almost bothered Bickslow. Because for thirty years, he'd been watching her save their human from countless things. Tiny things, most of the time. Tiny things that not even their human knew about, because with Lucy as his guardian angel, the one he didn't even know he had at all, he hadn't needed to know or worry about anything. But for thirty years, he'd competed with her. And… he'd come to like how competitive she was. He probably shouldn't have, but he did. It made things fun, and honestly, Bickslow didn't think he'd even want to be a reaper if it weren't for the fact it was fun. He'd never wanted it in the first place, but he'd come to enjoy it because of Lucy, in his own, twisted way.
Still, no matter what, Lucy could never win in the end. The angels would always lose. Because in the end, the reaper was always going to collect their human's soul. And Bickslow almost hated that he would be the one to win. He'd never thought about it much until then, as they'd just sat there outside that little café in the supposed most romantic city in the world – he'd never been when he'd been alive, so he figured he was missing the whole romantic part of it – just… waiting for something. He didn't want to win. He was just as competitive as Lucy was, but with that, he almost wanted Lucy to be able to win. He didn't want her to lose, because in a way, Bickslow knew he'd still feel like he'd lost, anyway, because it would all be over.
All of it would be over so quickly. He'd win. Lucy would lose. And Bickslow wanted to know why losing didn't bother her, because it bothered him far more than he knew it should.
So Lucy only shrugged and kept her kind smile on her lips as she gave him her answer. "Because everyone has their time. And when their time is up, there is nothing left for me to possibly do, no matter how much I want there to be," she said softly. "I always remember that I did everything I could to get them there, too, so it doesn't bother me that I always lose, as you put it. I never like seeing a human die before their time. It's not fair."
Bickslow sighed and sipped at the warm coffee as he looked back out to the busy street in front of them. Everyone has their time. He'd heard Lucy say it before, but he'd really never cared. Not until their human had reached it. "And what about me?" he asked then, not looking back to her, only keeping his eyes forward. He was still waiting for what was to come. "Do you think it was my time?"
"No."
"No?"
Lucy shook her head. "If it had been, you wouldn't have become a reaper," she said sadly. She hadn't told Bickslow that. She almost wished she hadn't had to, just because she knew Bickslow still hadn't completely adjusted, but she'd figured she'd have to do it at some point before it was all over for their human. "I wouldn't have become a guardian angel either if it had been my time. But there's nothing we can do about that now…"
He knew there wasn't. But now Bickslow couldn't help but wonder just what he could've done if he hadn't died when he had. "And… What about the kid?" he asked. "Think it's his time?" He knew it was, but he wanted to know if Lucy knew that, too.
And the sigh she let out answered that. "Yeah, it is," she whispered. And that time, she wouldn't be able to save him. She'd always known when their human's time would really be up, right from the minute he'd been born. It was why she'd found Bickslow's constant 'You know what? I think it's going to be todays' so entertaining. Annoying, totally, because he'd always been so sure of himself, not quite having completely learned what he was capable of at the time, but it had been amusing watching him come into his abilities, even when she'd been the one to teach him all of what he now knew (really, she knew way too much about reapers).
Still, she'd never had any intentions of telling Bickslow just when their human's time would be up. That was something he was supposed to learn on his own, and now that their human's time was coming to an end, Lucy couldn't help but be a little proud of her lil' baby reaper. He'd learned so much.
With another quiet sigh, Lucy looked down to her watch – the one that kept ticking backwards, counting down the little time their human had left. She supposed they should go then and get ready for the inevitable. And so without a word, and in a second, they were appearing side-by-side on the opposite side of the street, the pedestrians stepping around them naturally to walk along the crosswalk and get to wherever it was they needed to be, and just waiting.
"I really wish it wasn't today," the reaper sighed, looking up to the clear blue skies above them. "It's such a nice day."
"I know," Lucy agreed. But not everyone could die on a gloomy day. That would be too kind.
"Sucks the kid's on his honeymoon, too. You sure you can't give him an extra week or something?"
She gave him a soft smile when she looked up to him. "You know I can't." She really would if she could, but it was their human's time. There was nothing left for her to do.
And so then it happened. Lucy's watch finally stopped ticking just like it always did, and in front of them, lying in the middle of the crosswalk and surrounded by the dozens of shocked pedestrians, was their human. And not even Bickslow with his morbid sense of humour could find it in himself to see the humour of their human dying in the most romantic city in the world from a heart attack on his honeymoon, just because there was no humour to find at all.
Lucy only watched silently as the reaper knelt down on the ground beside their human and collected the still bright green soul from his body. She'd cried once upon a time, but she'd been doing it for too long for her to cry then. That was just life, and every human had their time. Bickslow was just seeing that, and even if his sole purpose was to collect souls and make sure they didn't get stuck in that world (it happened, and it was never very nice), Lucy could still see he found it difficult.
But he was her lil' baby reaper and eventually, he wouldn't find it so difficult. Maybe it would be when it was time for his next human, or maybe it wouldn't be for centuries. Lucy didn't know that.
And not long after, with their human's soul safely where it belonged, the reaper and the angel only found themselves sitting on a metal beam at the top of the city's most famous landmark. Lucy never would've thought she'd find herself just a little sad that their time was up, too, just because he was rude, obnoxious, arrogant, and had the most warped sense of humour she'd ever had the misfortune of witnessing. But there she was, feeling like she'd miss her reaper.
He really wasn't all bad, though. That much, she would admit.
But it was time for them to move on, too, and go and take their mandatory break between humans before being assigned to a new one. Lucy just didn't really know how to say goodbye. She usually didn't, either, but she wanted to.
It was Bickslow's sigh that brought her out of her thoughts, though. "I guess this is it then, huh?" he mumbled.
"Yup. This is it."
"Bet you're glad too, right?"
"Oh, very," Lucy groaned, though it was with a smile as she turned to face him. "Couldn't be happier."
The angel was a liar. That much Bickslow knew. But he could also deal with it, because he knew Lucy had strangely come to like his company and would miss him at least a little bit, and that made him feel better about himself because he'd miss her, too. Probably more than he should, too. "Uh-huh. Sure you couldn't," he grinned back at her.
But their time was up. Bickslow knew that. He didn't like it, but it was time to go their separate ways. He was just a little curious to find out what happened next for him. He knew he had a bit of a break, though he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, but what came after that? Did he just get reassigned at the drop of a hat and show up at some kid's birth like he had right after he'd died? Time could only tell, he figured.
So then Bickslow only let out another sigh and turned back to the guardian angel beside him. He was sure he was blushing just a little, but he could deal with that, just because he wouldn't ever see Lucy again and she wouldn't be able to tease him about it. "Well, since this is goodbye and all," he began, not doing much to hide his disappointment. "I figure I should probably just come out and say that I'm glad I got paired with you for my first human." Because of all the guardian angels in the world he could have been stuck with for just thirty years, Bickslow was glad it was Lucy. And really, he was a very happy lil' baby reaper.
Lucy couldn't stop herself from launching herself at the reaper, quickly wrapping her arms around his shoulders and nuzzling his cheek with her own. "Aw, my baby reaper is all grown up now," she giggled. She couldn't help but tease him one last time.
"Oh, shut up."
"Mm, no. But, you know you're always going to be my lil' baby reaper, right?"
"Wouldn't have it any other way, baby," he grinned.
Lucy could only roll her eyes. He'd ruined it. Sort of. (Not really.) And since Lucy really was just a little sadder about it all than she'd expected to be, she only sat back and left her hand on his shoulder, and then gave him a rough shove forwards. Even falling, Bickslow didn't lose his grin, and he only waved up at her one last time as he shouted, "See you never, Lucy!"
When Lucy felt herself being drawn towards her new human come the end of her mandatory break, she only smiled softly to herself and let herself be sent to them like she always did.
She didn't find herself in a hospital room that time, not like she had with her last two humans where hospitals had become more accessible through time. But instead, she found herself in someone's home – a lounge room, specifically. And her human who had yet to actually enter the world was already surrounded by their abundantly large and over-excited family. It was nice, almost. She'd always enjoyed that part the most, just because everyone was always so happy and it there was always so much joy and happiness ahead of her human.
She already knew how long her human had, and thankfully, it wasn't just thirty years. Then again, depending on what kind of miserable reaper she was paired with that time, that could end up being a horrible thing.
But of course, with all of the bustling going about in the middle of the room, Lucy didn't even notice the man leaning against the wall and staying out of the way until she turned to find him staring back at her, popcorn in hand and a horribly annoying smirk on his lips. "Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, huh?"
Once again, Lucy was only wondering just what it was she'd done in her past life that was so horrible to warrant her having to spend another eighty-nine years with a reaper like Bickslow.
But then again, if she had to be stuck with anyone for another nearly ninety years, she'd choose Bickslow. There were worse ways to spend her time.
Firstly, this was originally inspired by a prompt I saved a million years ago, and this was obviously supposed to end up being a little funnier and focus more on the actual Bickslow being annoying part...
"You're a grim reaper and I'm a guardian angel. We're assigned to the same human and you keep insisting that their time is up when I'm telling you it's not."
But it didn't happen, obviously.
Secondly, there's a reason I'm not marking this as complete yet. Originally, this was always going to be a one-shot, but the more I wrote of it, the more I realised that I could turn this into another universe with other one-shots and such (You know, like I do with a few of my other stories). But, for now, I'm still not too sure if I want to do that. I guess it depends on how well this chapter goes and what you all think of it. I already have ideas for other chapters, but I'm not sure whether I'll write them or not at this point.
But still, I hope you enjoyed this. It jumps a lot, and it's not exactly smooth, but oh well. But please remember to review and let me know what you thought of it!
- April